In many medical applications, it is desirable to periodically measure the temperature of a patient for diagnostic purposes. In this regard, a variety of temperature measurement devices may be utilized. Such devices include liquid based thermometers (e.g., mercury, alcohol, etc.), infra-red tympanic measurement devices, bi-metal conductors as well as thermally resistive elements (e.g., as used in a digital thermometer). Use of these temperature measurement devices typically requires physically accessing a patient orifice (e.g., a patient's mouth, ear or anus). Alternatively, some thermally sensitive sensors (e.g., bi-metal conductors) may be affixed to a patient's body and hardwired to a measuring device.
While the above-noted methods typically provide adequate temperature measurements for diagnostic purposes, each method may be intrusive for a patient and/or difficult for a medical technician to administer as well as require several seconds or minutes per measurement. For example, oral thermometers may have to be held beneath a patient's tongue for several minutes to provide an accurate temperature measurement. This may raise difficulties in cases where a patient is combative, injured, or very young. Furthermore, periodic measurements may prevent a patient from resting. Tympanic measurements while generally requiring a shorter read time to establish a patient temperature still require that a medical technician disturb a patient to access their ear. Furthermore, such temperature measurement methods may result in a technician contacting a patient's bodily fluids. Accordingly, this may require a technician to put on protective clothing (e.g., latex gloves) prior taking a temperature measurement and/or sanitizing after such measurement. As will be appreciated, this may substantially increase the time required to measure a patient's temperature.
Hard-wired sensors may automatically measure a patient's temperature on a predetermined schedule (e.g., periodically). Such sensors may alleviate time and sanitation issues for medical technicians. However, such hard-wired sensors restrict the movement of a patient and typically must be removed or disconnected to allow a patient to move about (e.g., to a restroom or different site in the hospital). In this regard, it would be desirable to have a temperature sensor device that allows for non-contact temperature measurement and which does not hinder the mobility of a patient.